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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23224051">Condemned</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett'>SegaBarrett</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Power (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Future Fic, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mental Health Issues, covid-19 mention</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 11:35:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,033</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23224051</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Tariq, after it all.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Condemned</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Disclaimer: I don't own Power, and I make no money from this.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tariq thinks he sees Raina behind every door, in every crowd. He thought that it would get better as he got older – it doesn’t.</p><p>He finally did get away from New York, at least. When he goes to Stansfield, he hears murmurs all around, passed down from friends of his father’s who are still bemoaning his untimely death and the rising star he could have been, a new future for the Democratic Party, they say. </p><p>He majors in History, because why not? He had to pick something, after all. And he figures that maybe from there he could go on to law school if he really wanted to. </p><p>He tries not to think of Proctor after he thinks about that.</p><p>There’s a girl who sits behind him in class who wears sunglasses even in the middle of winter, like it’s some kind of fashion statement. She wears navy Uggs and chews on her pen when she takes notes and never speaks up in class. Tariq becomes convinced, paranoia floating up his skin, into his neck and threatening to coil out of his mouth like a snake, that one day he’ll turn around to look at her and she’ll lower her sunglasses and it will be Raina’s eyes staring back at him.</p><p>So when he sees her, he shivers and he finds himself unable to answer simple questions when the professor calls on him.</p><p>It’s not like there’s anyone left to explain it to.</p><p>***</p><p>He sees Yaz sometimes, when he comes back on the weekends – then it’s once a month and then every two months. Every time he comes home, it feels less and less like home, and he’s staring at Yaz and Big Momma like they aren’t real, like they are characters on a TV show he’s watching that he somehow walked into.</p><p>School isn’t home, either; instead it’s an ever-shifting canvas that seems to be changing all the time, even when he wants it to just stay still already because it’s always moving too fast.</p><p>And he never, ever lets anyone see him cry. That’s the most important thing. The only one who ever saw that was Raina, and she’s… </p><p>Well, that isn’t an option anymore.</p><p>So there’s really no point, no rational point, to the way that he feels the hair stand up on the back of his neck when he’s sitting on the train and a girl sits across from him that looks just like her. It’s only a coincidence, after all.</p><p>It doesn’t mean anything, not a single thing, and there isn’t any reason for him to keep hearing Ghost’s accusation that he had gotten her killed.</p><p>He already knows he had gotten her killed. But what else could he do about it now? He will go to college, inherit the business. Have a life.</p><p>Raina never will. Maybe that’s how she wins, in the end – she’ll always be little orphan Annie, smiling and laughing, ready to keep his confidence.</p><p>She won’t ever live to betray him like the rest.</p><p>***</p><p>Tariq is sure that he might need glasses, but he’s resistant to getting them because who ever heard of a kingpin with glasses, cokebottles, looking like Steve Urkel walking around all the time.</p><p>Raina disagrees, smirking at him in the mirror as he gets ready to go to class.</p><p>“How are you supposed to be the boss if you can’t read the contracts?” she says and laughs. She always tilts back her head when she laughs. He’s not sure if he remembers her being this happy when she was alive.</p><p>Maybe he’ll always remember her worried. Worried for him.</p><p>Ready to die to protect him.</p><p>Ready to die and stay an angel so Tariq can grow to be the devil.</p><p>***</p><p>Tariq reads about Macbeth, reads about the way his own hubris took him down. </p><p>No man of woman born, he reads, and he wonders if Ghost ever heard a similar prophecy – he and Raina had been born by C-section after all, yanked and thrust into a world they hadn’t chosen. </p><p>Raina had returned to the stars. </p><p>Sometimes he takes the train back into the city and stalks the cars up and down, hoping for a fight. </p><p>“Who are you trying to be, Riq? Liam Neeson?” Raina taunts, laughing as she spins around in a warbly dance move, a funhouse mirror of an apparition, and Tariq wants to cry but he long since forgot how. </p><p>“I’m going to fix it,” Tariq tells her, and people start to turn to look at him before he glares back. </p><p>“You keep acting like that, people will start to think that you’re crazy,” Raina says, wagging her finger. “You don’t want that.”</p><p>“Everyone thought Tommy was crazy,” Tariq fires back.</p><p>“But Tommy didn’t chase away everyone who loved him.”</p><p>***</p><p>The day that Stansfield sends everybody home because there’s some new virus on the loose, Tariq takes the train back to New York and lets himself into an empty apartment, he feels like he is surrounded by radioactive material, or maybe ghosts. He wonders if ghosts are radioactive.  </p><p>He walks up to his old bedroom, reassembled after bullets had ripped through the original. It feels fake, as if some other Tariq was here instead, or maybe like it was some kind of movie set – Tariq St. Patrick, This Is Your Life! Big Mama had always loved that show, after all. Where was she, anyway? And where was Yaz?</p><p>Maybe the whole place has been condemned and no one thought to tell Tariq. Maybe a wrecking ball would come down as he was standing there, and then he would come right down with it. Maybe that would be Ghost, rising up from the ashes, a hand sticking out of a grave to pull Tariq down with him as soon as possible.</p><p>Maybe he’ll laugh when it comes to that.</p><p>The phone rings, then – it seems quaint, still having a house phone now. That’s a relic, after all. </p><p>He reaches over and picks it up.</p><p>“Tariq.”</p><p>“Raina,” he whispers, closing his eyes, and he wonders if that was what had given Ghost his nickname. </p><p>Because now he knows what it’s like to be nothing but a poltergeist.</p>
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